Transnational heterotopia and death-driven narcissism in A.L. Kennedy’s ‘Made Over, Made Out’

A.L. Kennedy’s short story ‘Made Over, Made Out’ (1998) exposes how and why a highly exclusive type of transnational perspective fails to translate into a capacity for dialogue with the (gendered) ‘other’. Structured by ‘homosocial desire’ (Sedgwick), the space shuttle, in which the story is set, functions simultaneously as a ‘heterotopia of crisis’ (Foucault) and as one of those ‘transient non-spaces’ typical of supermodernity (Augé). Although the main characters agree that their astronauts’ point of view fosters an ability to understand the planet as a whole, which undermines NASA’s vested national interests, the protagonist’s inability for dialogue with those who do not and cannot form part of his highly exclusive community is foregrounded. ‘Made Over, Made Out’ allegorizes a transnational utopia’s collapse brought about by individual psychic forces. Instead of gleaning some strategies for communication from his global insights, which might produce agency, the dichotomously minded hero’s death drive propels a psychic regression from narcissism to autoeroticism (Freud), while the eroticized objects (the planet/the wife) are locked into the position of the ‘other’ as spectacle.